Presenting the Bai

The Bai are one of the minorities that longer contact has had with the Chinese. It is also one of it has received more cultural influences. This has stemmed, partly, from the accessibility of the grounds that they inhabit, to his farmers' condition, and therefore with a rural culture that you present certain resemblances with the small stone, and from his pacific character.

The population of the Bai as the census of the year 2000 was approaching 1.700.000 persons. Of them the immense majority (one million and a half) Guizhou and Sichuan concentrate in the Yunnan province, dispersing the others for the nearby provinces, especially. Inside Yunnan most of the Bai live concentrated on the fertile flatness that surround the city of Dali, to the shore of the lake Erhai. Although some of them stay in mountainous grounds. In Guizhou they concentrate on Bijie, and on Sichuan, on surroundings of Xichang.

In the ancient books there were called they Minjia. They were called themselves the same Baizi or Baini. From 1957 they are called all Bai, but consisting reasons exist to think that the Leimo and the Nama, being still able to have had a common origin with the rest of the Bais, constitute nowadays a differentiated ethnic group.

Language

The Bai speak a language of the family tibeto birmana branch yi. In his language numerous Chinese words have joined due to the long contact between both peoples., in fact, most of the Bai are bilingual.

It is considered that there are two branches of the Bai, called Nama and Leimo. According to the official histories, the ancestors of the Leimo and of the Nama emigrated towards his current territory, in the basin of the river Mekong several centuries ago, belonging therefore to the big family Bai. Nevertheless, there are numerous differences linguistics and cultural, and possibly it is possible to consider them to be differentiated ethnic groups.

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